﻿﻿﻿﻿Samurai Spirituality﻿﻿

Shinto is one of Japan’s oldest religions. The Kojiki, Japan’s first extant chronicle discusses the mythology of Shinto and its kami. Kami directly translates as “god,” and are spirits. Shinto directly translates as “the way of the gods” (Turnbull, The Samurai and the Sacred, 7). Shinto involves ritual practice by praying to the kami at the countless shrines throughout Japan. Current practitioners wear clothing and practice Shinto similar to practitioners in the Nara (710 to 794 C.E.) and Heian (794 to 1185 C.E.) periods (Turnbull, 3). Bushido, the samurai code of honor and moral principles, was incredibly important to samurai, and they structured the way they lived around it. Shinto, alongside both Buddhism and Confucianism assisted in forming the samurai bushido, or “the way of the warrior.”

Hachiman, the deified spirit of Emperor Ojin, the 15th emperor of Japan, is the kami of warriors. He was the tutelary deity of the Minamoto clan, from which the first hereditary Shogun Yoritomo was born, of the Heian period. A painting from 1892 titled, Usa hachiman sha kei, Wake no Kiyomaro ason (宇佐八幡社景 和気清麿朝臣), depicts a high-ranking Japanese official, Wake no Kiyomaro, receiving a divine blessing from Hachiman at a shrine devoted to the kami, during the Nara period, the period in which Shinto and Buddhism became syncretic (Kasahara, 299).

Hachiman depicted as a Buddhist monk

According to Japanese historian, Toshio Kuroda, “In medieval times, the word Shinto meant the authority, power, or activity of a kami, being a kami, or, in short, the state or attributes of a kami” (Toshio, Dobbins and Gay, 10). After the thirteenth century, Shinto became a reference for the indigenous religion system, and not the actual kami (Kasahara, 299). Furthermore at this point, priests of the Ise Shinto set out to create a doctrine for the religion, which resulted in the formation of the Shinto Gobu Sho (The Five Books of Shinto) (Kasahara, 299). Between the 8th and 9th centuries Shinto began to mesh with Buddhism (Kuroda Toshio, “Shinto in the History of Japanese Religion”). According to Japanese historian, Kazuo Kasahara, the religions were so close that “most Buddhists considered Shinto subordinate” (Kasahara, 476).

During the Meiji Restoration (1868-1912), Shinto and Buddhism reversed roles in Japanese society, with Shinto becoming the new state religion as the state believed it could foster nationalism through it (Kasahara, 477). State Shinto was almost entirely different from Shinto’s previous form and resulted in the expansion of Shinto shrines across Japan (Kasahara, 476). The transformation of Shinto into State Shinto coincided with the dissolution of the samurai class in the late 19th century, also as a result of the Meiji Restoration. Today, Shinto focuses on ritual practice and worship of shrines without the influence of the emperor or state.

Scheid, Bernhard. “Shinto as a Religion for the Warrior Class: The Case of Yoshikawa Koretaru.” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Vol. 29, No. 3/4, Tracing Shinto in the History of Kami Worship (Fall, 2002), 299-324.

While the spiritual influences on the bushido ethic were comprised of the native Shinto and imported doctrines of Confucianism and Buddhism, the major schools that comprise Zen Buddhism held large prominence on the bushi class during the Kamakura and Muromachi shogunates. Developed from the Chan doctrine of Mahayana Buddhism in China during the 6th century CE under the Indian monk Bodhidharma, Zen continued the Mahayana tradition of devotion to the sutras and the idea of universal freeing of the souls with aid of the bodhisattvas. Yet Zen contrasted from other schools of Mahayana thought by stressing less on the sutra scriptures and more on the personal insight of meditation, its relationship to the individual’s life around them, and interactions between master and student.

Zen’s Japanese roots occur during the early Kamakura period in the 12th century under the teachings of former Tendai monk Eisai and his travels to China (Heinemann 224). The results from these travels led to the development of the Rinzai School, the term transliterated from the Chinese Linji. The establishment of the Rinzai School parallels the rise of the bushi class into political elites. The Rinzai monks sought patronage of these warriors and they exchanged interests in the doctrine for support. With the establishment of the bushi in power, Rinzai temples managed to gain favor among the warriors. With the succeeding Muromachi regime, the Shogun gave full patronage and support to Rinzai Zen (Heinemann 225). This school stressed the idea of kensho, or mindful concentration. The practiced included zazen, siting meditation, koan, riddles with references to Buddhist teachings, and samu, “mindfulness in daily chores”. Koan played an important role in the development of the mind. The bushi found this emphasis on sharp-mindedness and demanding training appealing (Riepe). It was this idea of sharp concentration and its application to daily life and warfare that the bushi found useful. A prime example was the suppression of such rationality in combat and the deterrence death or other mental obstacles might bring upon the individual (Cleary). Contrasting to Rinzai was the teachings of Dogen of the Soto school, transliterated from the Chinese Caodong. While Rinzai had support from the bushi class, Soto made gains with the common classes though bushi were counted amongst its followers. It focused on the meditation practice of shinkantaza, or stream of consciousness devoid of its external surroundings (Tanahashi). Compared to the vigorous training Rinzai followers, Soto adherents and the shinkantaza ritual was simple in comparison despite the classist criticism by Rinzai bushi (Tanahashi).

After the end of the Warring States and Reunification process that came under the Tokugawa shogunate, Zen’s popularity with the bushi was supplanted in favor of Neo-Confucian principles. Another major factor in the weakening of Buddhist patronage was the backlash headed by military leader Oda Nobunaga (Heinemann 227). Yet Zen would remain within the Japanese consciousness via the arts and later on this influence would be embraced in the West (Franck 118).

Heinemann, Robert K. “This World and the Other Power: Contrasting Paths to Deliverance in Japan.” The World of Buddhism. Ed. Heinz Bechert, ed. Richard Gombrich. New York: Facts On File, 1984. 224-227. Print.

Bushidō or “the way of the warrior,” developed in Japan during the Kamakura period (1185-1333), but was not coined as an official term until the seventeenth century (Cleary, Samurai Wisdom 9). With no official or explicit code of bushidō, the basic values of duty, loyalty, and honor in militaristic pursuits found their origins in a variety of religious and philosophical doctrines. As a critical reaction to Buddhism’s increasingly metaphysical, abstract focus, it was Confucianism and later Neo-Confucianism which provided the practical and ethical foundations for “the way of the warrior.” Ultimately, Neo-Confucian models for the warrior classes endorsed engagement in reality through duty and contribution to society with an ethical and benevolent nature (Tucker, “Japanese Confucian Philosophy”).

As Neo-Confucianism emerged from the studies of Zen Buddhism, its ideologies were conceived as the informal moral foundation for the literate warrior class of the Tokugawa state (Hurst 515). Confucian ethical models placed an emphasis on virtue of character and conduct, especially for those members of the warrior class, the highest ranking status in the “four classes” of people in Japan (Howland 3-4). For this reason, it was imperative that the bushi engaged themselves virtuously and efficiently in the greater social scheme, and in doing so, set an example with their compassionate words and deeds.

In this way, the moral responsibility of the warrior class related directly to their social responsibility and public service (Howland 5). This reaffirmed the classic Confucian concept of the “Five Human Relationships” (especially ruler-subject relations) where a reciprocal notion of duty and social responsibility existed as a basis for a productive secular humanism (De Bary 353). Ideally, the warrior class would function as an educated generation of leaders instilled with a practical and rational nature relating to their militaristic past. The main idea was that one must focus on cultivating one’s own righteous nature first, then one can apply the ethical principles to the promotion of the public’s well-being.

Confucius

Kaibara Ekken, Tokugawa-era scholar and educator, was one of the many thinkers that utilized Neo-Confucian ideals in moral prescripts directed primarily to samurai, as well as other classes. In order to bridge the gap between civil/cultural matters (bun) and militaristic (bu) duties in the Tokugawa period, Ekken promoted a systematic moral education based upon “literature, history, and ritual” as a tool (Cleary, Samurai Wisdom 11; Tucker M. 106). Through an analogy to “roots and branches,” Ekken proposed that the root of a rational bushidō lies ultimately in cultivating humaneness, and only upon this solid altruistic foundation may one cultivate practical arts such as swordsmanship (Tucker M. 26). Moreover, Ekken stressed the importance of ethical education and strategic knowledge which could enable a reserved objectivity, specifically infused with sympathy (Cleary Samurai Mind 69-74)

Other Confucian thinkers like military strategist Yamaga Sokō, even compared the Tokugawa’s socially conscious samurai to the Chinese Confucian gentleman, or junzi (The Analects 4:16, Hurst 521). In fact, Yamaga’s systematic views regarding a samurai’s moral duty was a fundamental component of the ethical philosophy for bushidō (De Bary 159-160). For those of the warrior class who were interested in such intellectual pursuits, duty and honor could be found through this form of secular humanism, especially since opportunities to display military prowess were in decline.

The influence Neo-Confucianism imparted on the way of the warrior, as well as the resulting ethical moral teachings, does not necessarily represent authentic samurai behavior, however, but an ideal representation of it. Often, the ideologies and precepts directed at the samurai class represented bushidō in a mythicized manner rather than realistically. Like mentioned, not all samurai were interested in the practical “learning of the heart and the mind” associated with Tokugawa Neo-Confucianism. Though many Neo-Confucian thinkers like Ekken and Yamaga formulated their ethical ideologies in respect to military functions and practical arts, many samurai still found themselves at odds with society’s overall socio-political transformation and struggled to accept the lack of military opportunity for honor (Ikegami 305).